This class is for high school students at Winnebago Lutheran Academy who want to learn how to make music on computers. We use Audacity and Garageband as our main tools, and we have fun almost every single day figuring out how to make music using audio and MIDI, but we also learn how to record vocals and instruments and even play guitar and drums if we need to.

We keep personal blogs (look on the right column of this page and click on our names) to help us remember what we've been working on, keep track of the all the decisions that we've made on our projects, and to share with our family and friends the music that we've created.

NEW 2013-2014 We're moving our blogs to Google's Blogger since WLA is using Google Apps for Education. Click here for Mr. Witte's new Music Tech blog. Click on the student names in the right hand column below to find links to their Google blogs for Music Tech and to see and hear what they've been working on in class.

There is value in learning how to do something from scratch (e.g. doing long-hand division instead of just using a calculator to find the answer) just so that you know the process (and in case you don't have a calculator!). But once you know how to do the process, do you have to keep doing the process, or can you say "I know how to do the process, I'm going to get to the answer as fast as I can"?

It's that way with the MIDI Hymn Project this sermester. In the past I've taught students to either click or play notes into Garageband one note at a time to input their MIDI hymn for chapel. That takes a lot of time (especially if the student hasn't taken a musical instrument before or learned how to read treble and bass staves). I taught my students this year to input notes into Garageband in a Rounds Project (Directions and Round Resources) by control-clicking and by recoprding while playing from a MIDI keyboard. Since they know how to input notes already, why make them input all of the notes of a hymn for the MIDI Hymn Project if a MIDI file already exists on the internet that they can import, edit, double-check for accuaracy, and adapt for their own use?

I see it as the same issue as using calculators in Math class. They are a tool for getting more Math work done. Understand the process first, but utilize the tools at your disposal to do even more work accurately and in a greater capacity than you could without those tools. It's like an old bit and brace versus a modern cordless drill. Should you use the old bit and brace just because it's original, or would it be more prudent to use the modern cordless electric drill to get your drilling done faster?

So, we downloaded a MIDI file of A Mighty Fortess (Ein feste Burg) from Cyberhymnal.org and imported it into Garageband (control-click the link on the Cyberhymnal page, save it to your computer and drag it into a new MIDI project (piano template). The file imports as three tracks: Pop Flute, Grand Piano, and Arthura Vox. The Pop Flute track is empty because GB

Dale Witte is the choir director and music technology teacher at Winnebago Lutheran Academy, Fond du Lac, WI. He has been teaching since January 1990 and really enjoys teaching students how God's gift of music works. Dale is also a church organist, piano player, violinist, and church music composer.